Preparing myself to visit Garen at the LRC is harder than I had expected it would be. I dress normally, in a pair of shorts and a long-sleeved shirt, but the room where I’m supposed to wait is freezing, even though there doesn’t seem to be an air conditioner anywhere. By the time Cheryl, the attendant who checked Garen in weeks ago, arrives to get me, I’m shivering.

“Welcome to Lakewood Rehabilitation Center. Who are you here to see?” she asks, eyes flickering back and forth between me and her clipboard.

“Garen Anderson?” I mean for it to be a statement, but it comes out as a question.

“Alright. I’m going to see your ID so I can log you in,” she says. I dig my driver’s license out of my wallet and pass it to her. She copies down my name, birth date, and license number, then hands it back to me. “Excellent. Now, if you have a cell phone, you’ll need to check it at the front desk.”

“I left it in the car,” I say.

She nods. “Great. Now, in case you don’t know our rules, we like to limit physical contact as much as possible. Handshakes are okay, hugs are not. If at any point we believe you are attempting to pass an illegal substance or weapon to a patient, you will be removed from the premises. If at any point we believe your presence is detrimental to a patient’s well-being, you will be removed from the premises. If at any point we believe you are disrupting the group or individual therapy process, you will be removed from the premises. Do you understand these rules?” I nod. “Wonderful. Now, sign right here, please.”

I jot my shaky signature on the line she indicates and follow her through one of the room’s only two doors.

The room that I am led into is a perfect square, with sea foam green walls and a gray-tiled floor. There are a dozen small tables, each with two chairs on one side, one chair on the opposite side. The tables are arranged in three rows of four, and only the first two rows seem to be in use so far. At the opposite end of the room, four people are lined up, each shifting restlessly in place.

“Sit right here, please,” Cheryl says, ushering me towards the nearest empty table. She then raises a hand over her head and calls, “Garen, your visitor is here.”

I glance over in time to see Garen step hesitantly out of the line and head towards me, his eyes on the floor. He doesn’t seem as thin as he used to, nor does he have the same bags under his eyes. His leg cast must’ve come off a while ago, because he’s walking perfectly fine. His hair has returned to its normal brown color and is longer now, but still shorter than when I first met him. Both of the holes in his lower lip seem to have closed up by now. Only once he has taken the seat across from me does he actually look up, going completely still when our eyes meet.

“Hi,” I say. He just stares at me, as though he can’t quite work out if I’m really there or not. After nearly a minute of awkward, unnecessary silence, he extends his hand to me. It takes me a moment to remember the rules that must be second nature to him now, and we shake hands. “I know you said you’d check yourself out of here if I came to visit, but I’m hoping to call your bluff.”

He lets out a soft ghost of a laugh and shakes his head. “Nah, I’m staying. I stopped threatening to leave after the first couple of weeks. When the withdrawal stopped, I guess.”

“So, you’re sober now?” I say.

He bobs his head, eyes on the table again. “Forty-five days, yeah. It doesn’t seem like much, but it… it feels like a lot.”

I can’t help but smile a little bit. “What, you feel free or something?”

“Suffocated, actually,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “I hate the idea that I’m only eighteen years old, and I’ve already put myself in a situation where I need to have more boundaries than anyone else I know. I mean, what if I go to college someday? I can’t drink. I can’t do drugs. I can’t party like other people my age party. When James and I hang out with the rest of the Patton boys, and everybody else wants to get fucked up, I won’t be able to. When I’m forty-seven years old and everyone in my family is drinking wine on a holiday, I won’t be able to. It’s so fucking suffocating, you have no idea.”

“I have some idea,” I say quietly. “After I tried to kill myself, it was like everyone expected me to suddenly start being all sunshine and rainbows, as if this weight was coming off my shoulders just because I was finally being forced to open up about what I was going through. When you admit that you have problems, you forfeit your right to be unhappy.”

“Yeah, I guess you do,” Garen says. “I just thought that things would get better. I mean, they have, obviously. I’m getting better. I don’t, you know, want to kill myself anymore. They still won’t let me have my shoelaces back, but I think everyone’s very clear on the fact that I’m not planning to blow my brains out anytime soon. And I’m pretty much over withdrawal, I guess.”

“You don’t crave the drugs anymore?” I say.

“Of course I do. I’m always going to want to do drugs, Travis. I don’t think that’s even the point. I think I’m just here so that I can learn how to want them without actually giving in.”

We sit in silence for a long time after that, both of us staring at the table, the floor, his stupid unlaced boots, anywhere but at each other. Eventually, Cheryl walks out into the center of the room and announces that it’s time for group therapy. I stand uncertainly and follow Garen, who is following everyone else. The next room that we’re led to is pretty much the same as the last; both are perfect squares with sea foam-green walls, but there’s a plush carpet here, and a large circle of metal folding chairs. Garen drops down into one of the seats, catches my eye, and nods to the seat on his left. I sit obediently.

Once everyone has settled, Cheryl leaves the room, and a skinny thirty-something-year-old with dark hair and a closely-trimmed beard joins the circle. “Morning, guys. How is everyone today?” I notice that the rest of the visitors are silent, though the patients seem to mumble a general greeting. “Enthusiastic as ever. Well, for all our new visitors today, my name’s Ryan. I’m the group’s counselor. We’re gonna start like we always do, by going around in a circle, and I want each patient to say his or her name, why they’re here, and a little introduction for their visitors, okay? Let’s start here.”

The frail-looking woman on his left introduces herself as Shelby and says that she’s in for cocaine addiction; the younger woman on her other side is her daughter, Jess. The next woman seems to be about forty years old, calls herself Linda, and admits to being an alcoholic; her husband, Michael, squeezes her hand. Jason, who looks to be somewhere in his twenties, says that he is here for heroin addiction, and that the two guys sitting next to him are his best friends, Aaron and Rick.

Finally, it’s Garen’s turn. He clears his throat and leans forward, as if to make sure everyone hears him properly. Right. That always-awkward introduction. But rather than stumble his way through a too-long explanation of my status as ex-boyfriend, ex-friend, ex-stepbrother, he simply says, “My name’s Garen, and I’m here for addiction to cocaine, oxycodone, and alcohol. This is my stepbrother, Travis.”

I glance at him, waiting to see if he adds anything else, but he’s silent. The man sitting on my other side takes over, introducing himself as Henry, a heroin addict. The next person, a beautiful but ill-looking woman named Anna Maria, is also a heroin addict, but everyone else seems to be there for alcoholism. The final exception is Sean, who mumbles that he’s addicted to meth. Once all of the introductions are finished, Ryan pulls his chair a little bit closer to the rest of the circle and says, “Alright. Since it’s visiting day, we’re going to talk about relationships. Now, these can be family relationships, romantic relationships, friendships, whatever you want to talk about. Is there anyone who’d like to start?”

The immediate response is from Shelby and Henry, both of whom discuss their concerns about how their addictions will affect their relationships with their children. Shelby confesses that she’s afraid that she has lost her daughter’s respect forever, whereas Henry is concerned that he is a bad influence on his son. Their discussion continues for quite some time, and I find myself trying not to check my watch. It’s too much of a pull, though, and I eventually glance down. Ten thirty-six. I was told group therapy would end at eleven, wasn’t I?

“Now, we’ve discussed relationships with children. What about romantic relationships?” Ryan prompts. After a moment or so of silence, Jason slowly raises his hand. Ryan nods. “Yeah, Jason, go ahead.”

“The longer I’m here, the more I wonder if I’ll even know how to be in a relationship without drugs being part of it. I’m afraid that once I’m sober, I’ll get bored of whoever I’m dating, because there won’t be that, you know, drama, or whatever.”

Garen nudges Jason’s foot with his. “I’m actually really glad you said that, because I feel the same way. I didn’t use at all from early October to mid-April, but I still feel like drug use had an impact on the relationship I was in at the time.”

“How?” I don’t realize I’ve spoken until everyone turns to look at me. My face starts to burn, and I slouch down in my seat. “Sorry. I’ll be quiet.”

“No, no, we encourage visitor participation in all of these discussions. That’s pretty much the point of visiting days. Do you have a question for Garen?” Ryan presses.

“I-I guess I just don’t see how his relationship could be affected by drugs if he wasn’t on drugs at the time. If he hadn’t been on drugs for ages,” I say.

Garen turns slightly to face me, though his eyes seem fixed at a point about three feet to the left of my face. “It’s like Jason said, I still needed that drama that addiction brings. I might not have been snorting coke or—”

“Sorry,” Garen says quickly. “The point is, I might not have been using drugs while I was dating you, but that’s just because I was addicted to you at the time. I still had problems, but I was focusing on something else, something besides drugs.”

Garen shakes his head. “He’s my stepbrother. Well, sort of. My dad and his mom are technically married right now, but they’re getting a divorce. Travis and I met when our parents decided to move in together, and we started dating a little while before they got engaged. We were broken up long before they got married. But, yeah. He’s both my stepbrother and my ex-boyfriend. I know, it’s weird.”

“Jesus, Gare, are you friends with any guys you haven’t dated?” Jason demands. His smirk implies that he’s trying to make fun, but the fact that he shortens Garen’s name by a syllable makes me think that maybe they’re friends.

“Hey, I haven’t dated you. Yet,” Garen says, and they sneer at each other.

“Back on topic, guys,” Ryan warns, and I get the feeling that he probably has to say that to them often. “So, Garen, as you were saying?”

Garen frowns down at the ground, his brow furrowed. Eventually, he shrugs, and says, “I guess I’m scared that, if I really stay sober, everything will have to be a lot more caged in. Or that the whole world will feel muted, like it’s a shadow of the intensity I felt from things when I was still able to use. I’m afraid love won’t hurt like it’s supposed to.”

“You think love’s supposed to hurt?” Mark, one of the alcoholics, calls from across the circle.

For the first time, Garen looks me right in the eyes and laughs. “Of course it is.”

That strikes something in me, some horrible well of anger I’ve been trying to crush for ages. I straighten up in my seat and cross my arms. “I think it makes a lot of sense that you feel that way. The first person you ever dated used to beat you. He hospitalized you twice, almost killed you the second time. He’s the reason you were prescribed all the painkillers that you ended up abusing. So, yeah, I guess it’s reasonable that you’d feel like love’s supposed to hurt.”

“I didn’t mean physically, I meant… I don’t know. If the other person doesn’t have the power to break your heart, to completely destroy every part of you, then you’re not in love,” Garen says, all in a rush, like he wants to get this out before someone can contradict him. “And I think that’s part of why I reacted to the breakup by doing drugs. You know, because drugs were something that I could just let engulf me completely, they were something I could drown in. I guess… after I knew how it felt to be so close to someone that it felt like he was in my veins, I was empty without that feeling. I needed something to replace it, and my heart wouldn’t let me get close to another person, so I had to find something that could literally be inside me, in my blood, in my heart, my head. The way it always felt like he was. So, maybe I won’t know how to be in love once I’m sober, because to me, people are just other drugs I get addicted to.”

Sean, the meth addict, shrugs. “Yeah, you might have to figure it out again. But what if the new, sober version is better than the faded, drugged-out version? I think you’re just looking at it from the wrong perspective.”

The conversation continues, but I tune out. I have to tune out. Hearing them all talk like this, as though drugs really might be the only thing worth living for—it’s too much for me to handle. It’s too similar to all those stupid meetings I had to sit through when I was institutionalized, where everyone talked about mental illness as though it was this fantastic thing they should hang onto. The other patients had made me feel like I should want to be depressed forever; the doctors made me feel like I should be happy every second of every day. There was no breathing room. Here, now, in this room, there is still no breathing room.

I only snap out of it when Garen nudges my arm, and I glance back at him again. “What’s up?”

“Time for individual therapy. Or, not really individual, I guess, since you’re here. But the rest of the junkies won’t be, so come on,” he replies. I follow him back out of the room and through a set of double doors that lead into a long, sterile-looking hallway. Halfway down the hallway, he veers left through an open door. I move to follow him through, then freeze; the room is a bedroom, or at least, some rehab imitation of one. There’s really only a bed, a chair, and a plain dresser, which makes it feel a lot less like a hospital room than my room assignment at the institution was.

Garen yanks open one of the dresser drawers and rummages through it for a moment before finally resurfacing with a small black notebook. Catching my eye, he gives me a sheepish smile. “My doctor makes me write about how I’m feeling every day, just to make sure I’m not getting crazier or whatever.”

“Yeah. Alex’s uncle used to have me do that sometimes,” I say.

Garen blinks. “What?”

“Alex’s uncle, Dr. Baker. My therapist. Or, ex-therapist, I guess. I haven’t gone in months,” I say. Something my once-every-other-week psychiatrist hasn’t exactly been psyched about, considering it means he’s not positive I still need the anti-depressants he’s still prescribing me. Garen just shakes his head and leads me out down the hallway. Once we’re back in the main waiting room, we catch the attention of Ryan, who’s leaning against the front counter and frowning at us.

“Garen, is there a reason you’re just wandering around?”

“I’m not wandering around, dude. I needed to go back to my room to get my recovery journal. Sue me,” Garen retorts, though he accompanies it with his most winning smile.

Ryan’s frown deepens. “Do I need to accompany you to Dr. Howard’s office?”

“Considering I’ve been going there every day for over a month now? Pretty sure I can find it. But I’m like, about to be late. Can I go now?” Garen asks. After a short nod from Ryan, we proceed through another set of doors and through a moderately populated common room. Glancing back at me, Garen adds, “Ryan’s cool most of the time, but sometimes he’s kind of a douchebag. Every time he sees me outside of my room or the group therapy room, he’s like, ‘Don’t you have somewhere to be?’ I hate it.”

I’m not really sure what to say, so I just stay silent as we make our way through the rest of the labyrinth to wherever this individual therapy session is supposed to take place. Up one flight of stairs, Garen stops in front of a door marked “Dr. Emilie Howard” and knocks once before opening it. “Morning, Doc. I’ve got yet another one of my previous sexual partners for you to meet!”

“We’ve been over this, Garen. Call them ‘ex-boyfriends,’ not ‘previous sexual partners.’ Have a seat.” I slip into the room after him. Dr. Howard, a gray-streaked brunette in her late forties, smiles at me and extends a hand. “Hello, there. My name’s Doctor Emilie Howard, and I’m Garen’s psychiatrist for the time being. Seeing as how he has taken it upon himself to call me ‘Doc,’ you’re welcome to do the same.”

“Travis McCall,” I say, and unable to stop myself, add, “Do all the patients here have to see psychiatrists?”

“No, though an initial interview is required. Only patients who are here under extreme circumstances are required to have regular meetings with me,” Doc replies. She gestures to the chair next to the one Garen has sprawled out in. “Please, sit.”

I take a seat, though I’d definitely rather not. God, I’ve had enough of therapists’ offices to last me a lifetime.

“I’d be interested to hear why you decided to visit Garen today. From what I understand, a very small percentage of Garen’s ex-boyfriends have taken the time to come see him while he’s been here,” Doc says.

Garen scowls at her. “Look, I don’t get why you keep trying to win this fight. There’s a difference between ‘boyfriends’ and ‘sexual partners,’ and the fact that you call them ‘boyfriends’ doesn’t mean they were.”

“I’m merely trying to get you into the habit of viewing interpersonal relationships in a healthier way. By refusing to acknowledge that certain men have gained the status of ‘boyfriend,’ you’re refusing to acknowledge that sex is supposed to be an intimate act.”

“Because it isn’t. Not by default, anyway. Sometimes sex is just sex. Or it’s part of a business arrangement, depending on how broke you are and how much cocaine you wish to acquire. Having sex with a guy doesn’t make him my boyfriend,” Garen says.

“A boyfriend is a boy with whom you seek regular romantic companionship.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt,” I say quickly, “but if that’s how you view the situation, who of his past uh… encounters do you think qualified as boyfriends?”

Garen snorts. “Stop fishing, Trav, you’re on the list.”

Doc shuffles through a few pages of her notes until she finds one that seems to be a long, long, long list. “Of the boys whom Garen has mentioned being physical with, I’d say there are about five who I would consider boyfriends.”

Garen reaches out and plucks the paper from her fingertips, passing it to me. “You wanted to know a while back how many guys I’d slept with? Apparently it’s a popular question. Doc made me write this up during the first week so she could keep my liaisons straight when I talk about them.”

The list is written all in Garen’s handwriting, in neat little columns; name, time period, number of times. It takes me a moment to realize that the whole thing is fucking color-coded, too – blue for handjobs, red for oral sex, and black for intercourse, though there’s a lot less black than I would’ve expected. Without really wanting to know, I pause to tally up the names. “Twenty-six? Seriously?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Garen says tiredly, “I’m a slut, I know.”

“Actually, I’m surprised it’s that few. Guess you over-estimated when you were yelling in my face that day at dinner,” I say. I glance down again and notice that five of the names are high-lighted. Andrew Donahue. James Goldwyn. Dave Walczyk. Ben McCutcheon. Travis McCall. “So, I guess the boyfriends are the ones you high-lighted?”

“Yes,” Doc says. “I’m curious about your relationship, though.”

I laugh. “Everyone is.”

Garen, however, scowls. “I’ve already told you everything there is to know.”

“I understand that, Garen,” Doc says patiently, “but I have a few questions for Travis. Once everything there is cleared up, I’d like to move on to a new topic. Is that alright?” Garen makes a circle with his index finger and thumb to signal that it’s fine by him, and Doc continues, “Now, Travis. When did you first learn about Garen’s issues with drugs?”

“Um,” I say, completely blanking. I’m so used to people wanting to know things about our relationship that I hadn’t prepared myself for this. “I don’t think I really heard anything about it until the day Bill kicked him out. Garen always implied that he got into trouble in school, but I didn’t realize it involved drugs until Bill started saying all this stuff about booze and cocaine.”

“Look, what would you have done in my place?” Garen demands, almost desperately. “Before he knew about all of this shit, Travis actually thought I was a good guy. He thought I was funny, and charming, and sexy, and okay. He was the first guy who thought I was boyfriend material—well, I mean, I guess Dave did, but Dave was like, beating me, so I’m not sure he really counts as someone who had a very high opinion of my worth. But Travis… Travis thought I was fucking great. Why would I tell him everything that I knew would scare him away? Why would I wreck that image he had of me as the perfect guy?”

“I never thought you were perfect,” I say, and he turns his head sharply towards me. I shrug. “I didn’t. You’re right when you say I thought you were funny, charming, and sexy, but I also thought you were reckless and spoiled and completely insane. I liked you anyway. Hell, I liked you because of those things. You wouldn’t have scared me away. And maybe if I’d known that you had a predilection for drugs, I would’ve… handled things differently when you came back. Maybe I would’ve been more prepared for everything, or I could’ve helped, or something.”

Doc leans back in her chair. “It’s very possible, but you did know about his tendencies after he returned. When did you realize that his drug use had escalated? When did you realize that no one was controlling this situation?”

When he almost shot himself. When he told me he had traded sex for cocaine. When he ran away to Ohio. When he cut off all his hair and shoved a metal bar through his lip in front of me. When he sought out a relationship with a guy who he knew would almost beat him to death. No, no, no. Who the fuck am I trying to fool? I knew before any of that. It would be easier if I had only realized it recently, at the last possible second, but I knew before that. I always knew.

“The day after he came back to Lakewood, we had a party. He snorted a line of cocaine off of our kitchen table, told my ex-boyfriend I’d cheated on him, and outed our friend Alex to all the rest of our friends. It was… just so screwed up, you know? And that’s when I knew it was a problem.”

Garen shakes his head again. “That’s such bullshit. That was the first time I’d used cocaine in like, seven months.”

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a problem,” I say, and he falls completely silent.

Doc goes on for quite some time after that, mostly just explaining to Garen why that first time was the start of the spiral. She informs him that he uses drugs as a coping mechanism, that he always has, and that it’s unhealthy by very nature of the act it entails. He nods along, and to my surprise, he seems like he’s actually paying attention. He participates enough, anyway, when Doc eventually asks him to read from his recovery journal entry from the previous night.

“Today, I’m nervous. I found it difficult to focus in group or individual therapy, and I know I half-assed my chores this afternoon. I’m too busy freaking out over visiting day tomorrow. Last week, Jamie, Ben, and Alex came to see me, and it was so hard to see them again, knowing how badly I’d screwed up. Jamie forgave me, because he always does. Alex forgave me, because he’s incapable of holding a grudge. Ben forgave me, even though he shouldn’t have. Last time I saw him before then was when he was dragging me out of Ohio. He got into a fistfight for me that day. He spent six hours in a car with me, listening to me scream all kinds of horrible shit at him. I told him that he should have considered himself lucky that I left, because it was only a matter of time before I convinced Travis to leave him. I said Travis had never really wanted him, that he’d only ever been a substitute for me, that no one would ever want him. I was kind of projecting my own issues onto him, but I still don’t understand how he could forgive me so quickly for saying all the disgusting things I said. Sometimes I think that Ben’s too selfless for his own good. And then he does something stupid, like tell me he’s going to try to convince Travis to come visit me, and then I know he’s too selfless for his own good.”

Garen pauses to clear his throat, and his eyes flicker towards me for a brief second before focusing on the journal page once more.

“I’m freaking out now, because I don’t know what I’ll do if Travis really does show up tomorrow. I’m starting to wonder if I was ever really in love with him. Not because I didn’t feel it – God knows I’ve never felt anything more intense than the love I felt for that kid – but because I’m afraid it doesn’t count. Travis deserved better than me, and I don’t know how I’ll face him, now that I know that. I was a shitty boyfriend; I got mad at him for not being out of the closet to his friends. I made out with Ben once behind his back. I never told him anything about who I was at Patton – the drugs, the way I treated the guys I hooked up with, everything I let Dave do. And none of that is how I should treat someone I’m supposed to be in love with, so yeah, maybe I never really was. Maybe, now that I’m in rehab and therapy, I have to learn how to love people the right way. More than anything, I want a chance to fall in love with Travis for real. I’m afraid I won’t get that chance, because I know I don’t deserve it.”

I watch as he closes the journal with shaking hands and tosses it onto the desk. Doc leans forward and places her hand on top of the journal. “Thank you, Garen. Most of that entry was quite self-aware. However, we’re yet again encountering the problem of you thinking in black and white.”

Garen groans and drags a hand through his curls. “That’s just how I think, Doc! Why do you have to get pissed at me every time I try to use my own perspective?”

“I’m not getting pissed at you, and it’s not just how you think. It’s one of the aspects of borderline personality disorder that you do have some degree of control over, and you—”

“You said I might not even have it. You said it’s impossible to diagnose something in a couple of weeks,” Garen says in a small voice.

“That’s true. However, I’ve met with you for at least an hour every day for the past forty-five days, and it’s my professional opinion that you suffer from a pretty textbook case of the disorder. And I think that, rather than try to deny it and pretend it’s not an issue, you should focus on dealing with the factors that cause the most trouble for you. For instance, your completely binary way of thinking. Has it occurred to you that your friends can still forgive you, even though they may be angry about how you treated them? Or that perhaps you were neither a good nor bad boyfriend to Travis? You seem rather inclined to believe that everything is either perfect and ideal, or the worst thing that could ever happen. The world is not a black or white place, Garen.”

“There’s nothing good about being a drug addict,” Garen retorts.

“There’s also nothing good about letting the fact that you are a recovering drug addict define everything else about who you are as a man,” Doc says simply. “We’re out of time for today, but for your next journal entry, I’d like you to focus on your binary thinking. Why you think you do that, what you think is good about it, what you think is bad about it. Make sure you include both sides – don’t just decide that it’s good or bad inherently, or else you’ll be missing the point of the exercise. Travis, it was a pleasure meeting you.”

“Nice meeting you, too,” I say before following Garen back out into the maze of hallways. He leads me back out to the front lobby, where Ryan is still chatting with the desk attendant. We are not interrogated this time, though, because it seems like most of the other visitors are on their way out, too. Garen and I pause near the door, staring awkwardly at each other for a minute or two.

“Well,” Garen says finally, “thank you for visiting me.”

“Thanks for not dropping out of rehab when you sat down at the table and realized I was the one who’d come to visit you. And for the record, you weren’t a bad boyfriend. You’re just a really shitty ex-boyfriend,” I say, and he laughs a little.

“I guess I can live with that. Listen, I was thinking, and… well, you heard Doc. I’m supposed to stop thinking in black-or-white terms, which I guess is, you know, a good idea. And I assume she means I should apply that to like, all areas of my life, or whatever. All events. All topics. All… people.” God, could he be more awkward? “So, maybe it’d be good if I didn’t think of you in a black-or-white way. Everyone used to think you were my stepbrother or my boyfriend, but now you’re neither, so that right there is proof that not everything is an either-or situation. I’d actually like it if we could be… friends, I guess. Something in the middle. Because you’re a really, really good guy, Travis, and I like you a lot. And you don’t have to love me, but I’d also like it if you didn’t hate me, because—”

Without giving myself time to really think it through, I curl a hand around the back of Garen’s neck and drag him forward so that our mouths collide. He lets out a small noise of something – surprise, gratification, whatever – against my lips, and I tangle my other hand in his hair, even though Ryan is banging his hand on the counter and saying loudly, “Hey! Guys, remember the rules!” Before he can move towards us, however, I take a step back from Garen, who is staring at me with round, shocked eyes.

“Of course I love you. And of course I hate you. And you’re really goddamn messed up, but so am I, and I still like you as a person. I don’t get why you think I should have to choose one way to feel about you,” I say. I don’t give him time to respond before I turn on my heel and walk out of the LRC, but when I glance back over my shoulder from halfway across the parking lot, I swear he’s laughing.